Antares 1.0 and the Future

Please no cloning, it removes the threat of violence and death. People will not be scared of anything, it will prevent people from ever having to make tough decisions, like save a friend and risk their lives, or let their friend be killed/injured/kidnapped/whatever. If you do dangerous things and go to dangerous places, voluntarily, and die because of it, that's what happens.

 

I am not a huge fan of this as it prevents people from making a character to join a new faction or colony that they couldn't have using an existing character. And yes, the quality control is an issue, I suppose. But for me, I like making a general backstory and then fleshing it out as I interact with other character. That way it fits in with the RP as opposed to having a rigid background. My first character, Fletch, was originally a scholar looking to travel to untamed space has developed into more of a wanderer that travels to use his knowledge and education to help others he meets. This dynamic character progression wouldn't be possible if I had simply kept him as a scholar escaped from his home, as his background stated. But hey, you're the admin, so you get the final say.

I was OOCly killed by someone on Asani the other day, for no reason IC or OOC. That 24 hour ban you proposed would've prevented me from using that character that was RPK'd for 24 hours, and I didn't consent to being killed OOC or IC. The system doesn't sound bad, but it's a bit flawed. What if there was a /pvp command or something that changed a value on the player ("pvp_on" for example) that showed up in planet chat to show that someone is consenting to potentially being killed. Then when the character dies, the server checks if the variable is set to true or false before the temporary ban takes place? I don't really know how hard that would be to implement, but if the /nick command isn't vanilla, making something like what I described seems (to me at least) like a good and fairly unabusable solution.

 

i'm gonna keep this short and sweet with my opinions.

Staff should not have to interfere at all, and a law-faction made by staff is bull and should stay away from the player-base. If a law-faction is made, it should be done by players.

If any economy is done, please god don't make it a tier progession system akin to a game. Nobody likes role-playing the game.

For colony-building, people should be allowed to use decoration and cheat-mods for building. Nobody wants to spend time digging for building blocks and decoration, so expect shitty colonies if you make it so.

People should be allowed to use multiple factions, but perhaps trying one character per faction? No extras or etc.

tl;dr my short blunt thoughts

 

I think that banning the ilikecheating mod or similar wouldn't accomplish anything besides keeping people from making their characters interesting. People who want to spawn in millions of gold bars are going to find a way to do that whether it's allowed on the server or not. A better rule might be something like "Don't abuse the spawning system," where vanity armor and the like are allowed but pulling money or uber-weapons out of thin air is not.

I really like the idea of making people get permission for each individual character. As it stands, when I want to consider a new character I have to debate in my mind whether they go with the lore and make sense, or else make a roleplay planning thread relating to the character. It would be a nice way to figure out how plausible a character is and get some good criticism, and it might help deter the rush of grizzled mercs flowing through the server. Alternatively, one might institute the whitelisting policy for combat-oriented character only, to encourage non-combat alts or regular characters.

As far as faction representation goes, I disagree on the one-faction-per-person rule. All it would do is restrict people and keep them from coming up with interesting factions -- if five different variations on the 'mercenary army faction' exist, and you decide to choose one of them, suddenly you can't have an original idea and create a faction based off of it because you're tied to your merc-group.

 

The staff law faction should oversee the outpost, and ONLY the outpost. (Assuming it isn't an invite-only thing)

Lore guides aren't a bad idea. Dibs on writing the Avian one.

Cloning - No. Simply saying "It will have downsides" doesn't mean anything. Most people who get cloned don't want to rp downsides, so they won't. A decent consent system easily avoids the need for cloning.

If you MUST include cloning in the server, A "Cloning App" would be a good idea.

Character whitelisting/Faction rules - Really stupid. If someone makes a rulebreaking character completely unlike the one they applied with, then ban them. Same goes with faction regulations. Throwaway alts in factions are not a bad thing. They allow a certain degree of freedom to create events and narratives that would otherwise be difficult. Just because it can be abused doesn't mean it should be banned.

Banning cheating mods is a bad idea, for obvious reasons. Same goes with starting gear.

Vehicles: If people want to use vehicles for decent rp, and not just to show people how AWESOME and BADASS they are, they should be able to. eg. Civilian vehicles: yes. Military grade ubermechs: No.

 

I agree with this completely. Metagaming on purpose or on accident is bad but people will know you're doing it if you are and from what I've seen, most people want to avoid metagaming regardless of whether it's in their favor or not. What's worse than metagaming is enforcing a restriction on us that limits our options and forces us to take actions that makes no IC sense for OOC reasons.

Please don't allow this rule. I don't think anyone's in support of it.

 

Perhaps the outpost could be the only 100% safe zone, due to some super duper crazy advanced pacification field built by the super intelligent ancient race that built the stargate you use to get there.

 

Graw's Opinion!
I see a lot of potential in the original post, but there are a few sections that need clarification or work, and a couple I disagree with entirely, either because of the particulars of implementation, or because of issues I found with the idea overall. Original post contents are denoted by large, italicized block quotes—the bolding is my own, and indicates something I will be addressing in particular. Critiques are of the ideas as presented in their current form, and are meant to alert possible supporters to their downsides. Many of the sections have positive spins—which are hereby and below duly noted—but be forewarned that most of the words I've written on certain sections are criticisms. I want to dissuade discussion of particulars, because while we can recognize and hypothesize about some details that might emerge later, this first look should be aimed at the larger, amorphous and malleable suggestions presented to us.

Lore​

"Chucklefish has continued to disappoint me with their lore. It's fine for a singleplayer game, but it brings up many stereotypes and other problematic canon that would be difficult to balance in roleplay. As well, there's just simply not enough of it. There's too much left up to interpretation. I propose that Antares create it's own lore, based on CF's lore, but selectively discarding the harmful parts and filling in the gaps ourselves. Any new lore released by CF would be invalidated unless we choose to incorporate it. The Community could help us to create this new lore and allow Antares to have a better foundation for roleplay. I'm looking for agree/disagreement on this idea, not necessarily proposed lore. That discussion would come later."​

I agree with much of the sentiment of this section. Important questions of Lore are often addressed in one book from the source material, which there isn't a lot of in total anyway. That said, interpretation can have positive effects on roleplay, and could—in the case of a split away from Chucklefish—lead to better justified server canon. Creating our own lore would be a huge undertaking, but I don't doubt our community's ability to create something fitting for the universe we've sculpted this year. However, determining what pieces of Chucklefish's lore are harmful and what gaps should be filled instead of left open for ease of learning and likelihood of general observance should be a community-driven and well thought-out process.

The first step would be to judge the extent of the solidification that the community will provide through votes and deliberation, in order to avoid any unnecessary constraints on roleplay or enjoyment of the server. Discussion of this boundary should evoke questions like " To what extent do we provide concrete answers to how IG elements like beaming function?" Or "Should we outline how large, galactic factions are interacting with the Frontier, or let people call upon lore as needed—within the bounds of reason—to drive their RP?" There is a massive amount of work to be done and myriad questions that will need to be answered if our intention is to create a universal server canon that deviates from Chucklefish's original lore. The benefits may well outweigh the negative consequences, however, as once the arduous task of laying a solid foundation has been completed, our community will become more self-reliant and insulated from sudden or nonsensical changes to game lore; the hard work might well be worth it. Or it might not be! Either way, it's for we—the playerbase—to decide what to do, together.

Setting​

"Antares is intended to be a frontier society. This means that it's essentially the Sci-Fi equivalent of the Wild West. However, I want to make sure that this is a setting that the community even wants. It's interesting because it gives a reason for new characters to show up. It's a promising land of opportunity, so to speak, rich with adventure and resources. However, I've noticed that from time to time, players tend to give themselves technology that wouldn't be appropriate for a frontier society. I personally feel that technology should be gradually introduced to the frontier, perhaps through events. I'm looking for community input on these topics."​

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I think that the current setting is one that most people agree upon. The Frontier is a very hectic place, where colonies blink in and out of existence in spans of only a few weeks. A community vote might not even suffice to change the nature of our playground in the stars at this point—clearly, this place is established in our minds, and we've all chosen this highly variable locale as our roleplaying setting of choice.

As far as technology is concerned, I wholeheartedly agree. Powerful weapons might be useful on the Frontier, but the logistics of actually obtaining said technology are complicated and likely expensive. As far as production on the Frontier is concerned, only with weeks or months of roleplay, legitimized funding and resource management, and approval from the community and moderation team should ridiculously powerful implements like power armor or instant healing products even be considered to be allowed.

Where imports from main sectors, etc. are concerned, even money should have to be procured, to pay for professional production, protection of the goods, and shipment to the Frontier—and again, mod and/or community approval should remain a required part of the OOC process, if we even choose to allow the technology at all. New technologies from abroad could be further developed as well and eventually become cheaper as they become ubiquitous, but this process should be very gradual, and again mandated or overseen by the community or mod team.
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Law​

"Antares has been completely lawless, aside from the occasional player faction trying to instill law - which as far as I know, hasn't worked too well - so that's why I'd like to introduce the idea of a Staff-backed Law faction, something to provide characters with a safe haven protected by terrorists and bandits (such characters would have to request with Staff for permission to attack, and such events would be supervised). Players shouldn't have to put their characters in danger just because they've chosen to play on their server. Outside of this protected Space, Antares would still remain the Lawless and Dangerous place that a frontier should be. Now, the Staff-backed Faction would only play a guardian role, protecting a small haven (star system) and serve as a plot device for various events. There shouldn't be any concerns of power abuse or interference with roleplay. Thoughts?"​

This is the first section I have major qualms about. Firstly, the whole idea of the Frontier as a lawless place is pretty central to the way people roleplay. This is a place where most people tote guns, where beaming to the wrong ship could result in the loss of a wallet or limb. I'm not inherently opposed to the idea of a safe place for some uneventful albeit safe bar rp™, as I think that it could limit conflict to those who expect and prepare for it—it should be noted that those wishing for more free reign might well flock to a player-controlled colony and away from the bored clutches of the walled garden.

However, the idea of a lawful faction rich enough to negate nearly any attack—apparently even something small like an armed robbery—does not mesh with the ethos of Antares, of a Frontier on the edge of civilization. Disregarding the possibility of a monopoly on ludicrous cloning technology, what reasoning does a criminal have to leave alone the ripe pickings available at this refuge? What is the IC justification for postponing or abandoning an attack? There must be some 'fancy scanners' on such a planet, or some equally very powerful IC deterrent implement. There's a problem if, OOC, a pickpocket or thug needs to fetch and distract a mod from other, potentially deadly role-play scenarios just to steal a wallet or beat someone in an alley.

Players who are new to the server are playing characters that were willing to risk their fortunes and lives to make a profit or seek refuge in the far-flung Frontier. Besides, they can have their character act in ways that don't endanger him or her—having a permanent, always-safe, stable location to immediately arrive to seriously diminishes their likelihood of leaving said place, particularly IC. If this organization managed to crop up through the bloody trials and errors of the frontier successfully enough to be widely regarded as as permanent feature and influential acting force therein, even bounty-hunting veterans and the edgiest of lords would be hard-pressed not to flock to this safe place that just happens to exclude legitimate acts of confrontation—OOC, players could decide to avoid the faction, and warp their characters' logic to rationalize staying apart from this untarnished beacon of peace, but in that case, it feels like the IC invulnerability of a mod-consent-shielded faction is forcing them to metagame for the sake of more interesting roleplay.

Cloning​

"I'd like to introduce an idea for cloning. I think that it's very unfair that a player's character can be permanently killed whether they like it or not. This is why people hide behind our consent rules, even though they're not supposed to. It's evident that the consent system is flawed, but that's because permadeath is flawed. Permanent Death should only be performed at a player's wishes, as a Staff requirement, or to serve an event or other plot purpose. Cloning is a canon technology, and while we can ignore it, I feel we're only hurting ourselves. I think cloning should be brought back with heavily penalizations, and that outlaws and violent characters should lose their right to clone. This can be ICly justified by the Law faction I mentioned earlier, if we give them the purpose of providing cloning services for Antares residents. I'm looking for feedback on this ideas, and suggestions for penalizations if we were to implement it."​

This is a hot topic today—and for good reason. Cloning is unnecessary, overpowered, and as currently described, goes against any sort of semblance of realism.

It would be unfair if a player's character could be killed whether they like it or not, but that is explicitly against the PvP conduct rules—starting with number one. Besides, this is not a common occurrence on the server. Rather, as the original post goes on to say, people unfortunately and often unfairly hide behind this and the other consent rules, doing the opposite—people are refusing to die. Permanent death, however, is an end result of consent and proper roleplay, not the acting factor that leads to rulebending and unfair combat roleplay. Rather, the players that perform consenting actions and then either revoke consent, begin large OOC arguments, or powergame in order to live are the only ones to blame. It's up to the mod team to make sure that players' wishes are taken into consideration, and to deliberate and decide when a player refuses to end a character that has no possible away to escape a situation that they put themselves in. It seems like implementing cloning would only appeal and celebrate consent shielders, offering them an immensely powerful and more alluring alternative than saying no: being able to say yes to death, and at the same time render it completely pointless as they're reborn with a few fewer pixels and without any incentive not to tread heavily wherever they please as the punishment for rash and consent-informing actions is stripped bare or away completely.

The whole idea of disempowering death neglects both the 'space neo-wild-wild-west' zeitgeist of the Frontier, and common sense. In a universe where acting good—according to one faction—grants immortality, what's the point of doctoring? As @Coldmaj pointed out, killing yourself is less meaningful than losing a limb in this strange new place. "Euthanasia serum will sort any problem you have in a few days, tops—hey, why do we have to die to clone ourselves, anyway?"

As far as I know, we currently ignore cloning for IC and OOC purposes, arguing that it is too expensive to pursue without a large, dedicated lab team and bushels of pixels to purchase and operate high-tech machines, and that an immortal character is ridiculously overpowered—almost infinitely overpowered—compared to all the rest on the server. Enabling cloning for anyone or for any number of people larger than zero would raise the same issue on the same or a much larger scale, particularly if the entire populace of criminals that make the Frontier the Frontier are forgone the ability to live forever. Legitimizing immortality for lawful characters alone completely disincentivizes playing characters with other persuasions, as the level playing field and ultimate consequence that death provides are removed according to the IC decisions of one, consent-shielded, permanent faction.

There are several issues with the IC justification of cloning as well, also related to making consent shielding functionally obsolete via the immortalization of characters. Firstly, the issue of Glitch, and perhaps the Novakid. These races are nonbiological. While they possess some sort of brains (positronic imitations in the case of the robots, and Chucklefish-knows-what in the case of the star-people), their bodily structures are not able to be grown like those of other organic races. Attempting to justify a glitch manufacturing plant or some sort of cold-fusion-reaction-binder machine (both of which are very silly ideas indeed) only leads me to question why we are going through so much trouble to defy logic and exit the furthest sphere of plausibility in order to pursue an option that lifts constraints from potentially lawful-good decisions, when we could just punish consent-shielders for the existing rule that they are breaking without pulling millions of pixels, a gargantuan cloning facility, and an entire faction out of the air—that's managed by probably fewer than fifteen characters IC upon release.

Another troubling factor in terms of technology is the physical limitations of the cloning process. I saw a few comments suggesting that somehow, a dying person performs interstellar telekinesis, where their thoughts travel—sans magic galactic-radio-brainscanner-helmet—into a computer which quickly grows a new brain (or does something equally ridiculous) in exactly the same neuron-by-neuron configuration as that of the deceased (their memories travel at FTL). This isn't cloning as much as it is instantly replicating or recording someone's brain across lightyears. No proposed length of recuperation time is enough to vindicate these shenanigans. As said in the original post, "players tend to give themselves technology that wouldn't be appropriate for a frontier society." Making such a rampantly unrealistic technology (beyond even super-fast clone-growing and on-site memory backups—which are only rendered more feasible due to admission of at least one limiting factor, proximity) available does not sit well with the sentiment that technology should be appropriate to the Frontier and make at least a little sense. For these reasons, I don't think cloning belongs in the Frontier IC in any form. The potential for abuse is too high, and it renders consent-shielding obsolete only by providing an even more adverse alternative.

Progression & Economy, Colony Construction​

"It's very unfortunate that CF has decided to take the quest-based route for progression. While I can understand why they've done this, it doesn't suit roleplay very well as it defines various things about a player's characters as they progress. So I move to void the quests all-together, and find alternative means of progression. My primary question here is, should be restrict the use of mods that allow items to be spawned in at a player's discretion? It would allow easy quest-based progression, but it would allow the abuse that it already rampant and common throughout Antares. I'm not advocating an absolutely strict economy, but I do think that things should have more value beyond the sentimental value we place upon it through roleplay. I'm looking for advice and suggestions."​

Please note that I lumped these two sections together. It seems imperative that we separate from the IG quests completely—I wasn't aware of any IC correlation to server Canon besides the acknowledgement of the existence of the murderous penguin race. As others have stated more vehemently, restricting spawning mods would be absolutely contrary to the purpose of the server. The community uses these tools to create everything, and restricting them in the name of cutting down on abuse is pointing the blame at the brush-and-can rather than at those utilizing their hands to violently splatter oil paint all over our fine plush carpet. Pulling buildings, just like pixels, out of thin air without proper IC introduction and recognition should be punished. On the other hand, people who properly accrue funds, roleplay construction, and produce opuses of architecture thereafter should be allowed to continue providing our server with the amazing, quality craftsmanship that entices new and old players alike to try their hands at collective storytelling.

Value is a hard thing to pin down, particularly in the medium of Starbound. There are countless planets offering bounties of lumber and natural resources, and so it is usually willingness to commit to a course that is most rewarded with IC currency. Legitimate building and resource acquirement are important, however, given the lack of people who appreciate the finesse and stylistic minutiae of lumberjack rp™, it's hard to blame insatiable builders for claiming to have bought from NPC Loggers Inc., etc. It seems like putting restrictions on the speed of building and limiting daily shipment sizes would be a preferable alternative to removing the OOC tools builders use to construct.


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Whitelisting​

"We currently employ an account-based whitelisting system that allows players to create characters at their whim. It also allows more sneaky players to create characters entirely different from the one they submitted during their whitelist process, in an attempt to bypass our restrictions or out of genuine innocence and ignorance. I could enable character-based whitelisting, which would require players to apply for every character they wish to play. This would allow us, as Staff, to have much more quality control. We'd also need a rather large team of Reviewers to handle the heavy load, however. I'm looking for feedback and opinions on this idea."​

While a character-specific whitelist would undoubtably increase quality on a case-by-case basis, it is certainly something that would require a far larger staff than the server seems to possess at the moment. Instead of taxing our moderators and admin with these duties, we should, as referred to elsewhere, make the character reporting process clearer and perhaps more straightforward. It might be a good idea to indicate that the first step in an investigation is something like talking to the party accused, or giving them instructions on how to bring that certain character up to server par, so that submitting a report isn't viewed as outright nonconstructive or an act of spite.


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Starting Out & Default Equipment​

"I've been mulling over the idea of having all characters start out with a default set of equipment, with some variance. This would be difficult to enforce if we allowed a rampant and free non-economy, so I am unsure if this idea has any basis at all, but I still wanted to present it regardless. I don't like how some players try to bring in heavy weapons or absurd technology to the frontier. In a perfect world, everyone would start out the same and earn their reputation and equipment through playing. However, especially with the 1.0 update, this type of progression will be next to impossible to implement and enforce. It all depends on what CF allows us to do in the back-end. I'm looking for discussions on this idea, based on the assumption that we may be able to someday enforce this realistically."​

Starting out with nothing is all well and good for some characters, but forcing a backstory that ends in a penniless relocation to the Frontier onto every new addition thereto limits the customizability and diversity of characters, and frankly sounds quite dull. While fairness and a level playing field sound good, the same people who would have air-pulled at the beginning of their character's career will eventually find a way to get the gear and abilities that they desire later on via similar methods. I'm not opposed to a few gun-toting, middle-class mercenaries originating with armor, or certain characters having advantages explained through rich backstories. The free reign system should work, so long as players who bring in "heavy weapons or absurd technology" are called out on their obvious shenanigans. Additionally, keeping tabs on those characters that arrive too well equipped to deal with a sector fraught with peril is a lot of work—policing those who find a one-of-a-kind doomsday device on a crashed ship somewhere in the Frontier doesn't leave much time for making sure that someone is justifying how much steel they've managed to smelt in an oven. Realistically, people arrive at the frontier from all over the galaxy and from many different walks of life. Constraining roleplay to the extent where everyone begins with some fugly leather clothes would be detrimental to the overall Antares experience. I think that with a general rebranding of the reporting process as explained in my response to the Whitelisting section, the moderation team will be able to control and speak with players accused of facilitating the introduction of any unwanted equipment.

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Faction Representation​

"It makes me very upset to see players creating throwaway characters to represent the "might" of their faction. Again, I stress that Antares is a frontier society and that the population would be fairly low. A faction isn't going to have a mighty army, or terrifying fleets of ships. I think factions should be a "what you see is what you get" deal and that players should be restricted to one faction, to both prevent metagaming, spying, and false representation. A player shouldn't have 5 alts, each in one faction. A player should carefully choose a faction to dedicate themselves and ONE character to. Throwaways shouldn't exist, even for the purpose of battles, as that just serves to keep the core faction members alive and "powerful". Particularly if we implement cloning, this issue is likely to not be as relevant or serious, but I still think it should be discussed. A "large" faction would be 15-18 players, due to the low population of the Antares Frontier. It's entirely unreasonable to have these invisible armies and ships backing up a faction's "power". You may be wondering that if these policies are enacted, what about previous lore established by powerful factions? I'd like to state that just because something has been permitted in the past doesn't make it okay, it just means it wasn't addressed. Previous factions, I imagine, could keep their previous lore, but would be subject to the new policies. I'm looking for discussion, suggestion, feedback, and opinions."
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Creating throwaways to buff up the might of a faction should definitely be considered illicit if it's not already. Creating an army of alts out of thin air is tantamount to claiming that standing next to one's character are forty highly trained and heavily armed guards named Joe, John, Bob, and Victor McSoldier alternatively. Both misrepresent the faction's actual amount of power and influence without any sort of character development—or character at all—or a real reason. Similarly, choosing to have several alts join one faction is a dishonest decision. And even if the 'faction stuffing' is not directly intended to buff the organization, the player who unknowingly decides to fall under a similar banner time and time again produces the same misrepresentation of the true influence of the organization IC and OOC as those sneaky devils who seek to increase their numbers by whatever means. An inordinate number of similarly aligned alternate accounts does no favors for the faction's real ability to produce compelling roleplay, crazy multi-client ninjas notwithstanding. Factions that have fallen into this trap wittingly or unwittingly should seek to rectify any unfair representation that they might currently claim, through editing their lore or acting out a schism whereby all the dormant or phony members are excised ICly.

I disagree, however, with the notion that one character shouldn't be allowed to register in multiple factions on the Frontier. Going to several colonies and faction bases is not a direct cause of metagaming behavior, nor is metagaming dependent on their enrollment with the factions in control there—if a player willingly metagames, that is their fault, but is unrelated to factions in-and-of themselves. IC spying, when not combined with willing OOC metagame, seems like a fine bit of roleplay, at least to me. What fun is there to be had if loose lips can't sink the ships of fleeting frontier factions? As far as false representation is concerned, it seems that IC propaganda or false census figures could be allowed—OOC fudging or lies should be forbidden of course, and forum accounts being tied to the real characters would guarantee legitimacy. And, of course, the fake soldiers couldn't ever be counted on in a fight, given their blatant nonexistence. While it is true with one character in multiple factions that those groups gain some power, there is real character development and possible inter-faction conflict roleplay to be enjoyed, and a real character and player behind the mouse no matter which way the character's allegiance swings.

Vehicles & Powerful Weaponry​

"Since Starbound currently doesn't natively support vehicles, and abuse of the drawables system causes lag problems - and as well, I hear, may be restricted with the 1.0 patch - I am of the notion that vehicles shouldn't exist in the frontier. Ships are one thing, but vehicles are another. These planets are small enough that they can be explored on foot, and if/when CF adds vehicles, we can discuss them again then. As well, I think that weapons of planet-destroying capability are far outside anything that would be seen in the frontier. Frankly, it's absurd. As well as nuclear weaponry, or anything with more explosive capacity than a rocket launcher (which would be rare in a frontier, as-is, I'd imagine) would just be too prone to abuse and wouldn't make sense to have in the first place. I'm looking for feedback and suggestions to policy on what to do concerning these topics."​

Vehicles should certainly exist in the Frontier, but due to game constraints, they should be few and far between and, as @Cole Ombre suggested, difficult to maintain—perhaps vehicles could be limited to factions, or to groups of players who must apply for their use. There should be a community vote on vehicular use and procurement, as on so many other things. Giant weapons like nukes, planetbusters, etc., should be treated with even more seriousness than other technologies introduced to the Frontier as explained in the response to the Setting section. While perhaps not utterly impossible to obtain, weapons of this scale must absolutely be introduced to the server roleplay in a timely and agreeable fashion and should require moderation approval without doubt.

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Forums​

"The forums have existed as they have for a long time. However, I think they could better. We could perhaps have an IC library, re-vamp the Market section to make it appeal to more than just buying/selling, and perhaps give the Security forum it's own entire section and break down the various types of reports to help bring awareness to the reporting process. I'm looking for suggestions."​

An improvement is always welcome, and I am interested in seeing what the rest of the community thinks about a reimagining of the often unused Market/Trade page. A library forum would be an excellent place to store server canon, historical inter-faction treaties, and IC papers on various subjects.

Reports and security should certainly be reconfigured so that anyone can easily choose the option that's correct for them. I think that design changes could be made as well—colors could be assigned to forum category titles, so that they are easier to pick out than white text next to other white text.


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Magic​

"I just wanted to mention this to clarify any confusion on the subject. Regardless of what CF says, Magic does not exist in Antares. It's unexplained science. If you see a "wizard", they're delusional and messing with forces they have no understanding of. Not looking for input on this one."​

This is clearly false—for proof of Antares' magic qualities, one need only check a particular post on the most venerable thread on the forums.

~
thank you for reading my responses and suggestions—and sorry for the delay, I lost about half of everything at one point.
-graw​

 

Lore
The lore works fine for what it is, and with 1.0 coming, any lore in the game at that point is officially canon. If you have an issue with the current lore, what is it, and why do you feel it should be changed?

As of right now, the base lore allows anyone to have an easy jump off into the server without having to read other documentation. It doesn't matter if it was made with the intention to roleplay, it still serves its purpose.

Setting
I have no issue with the current setting as it is a melting pot for anything. I don't feel restrictions need to be placed on technology or anything else based on the setting.

Law
I have always supported a mod run law faction. It gives people a safe place to roleplay that is sorely lacking, it makes being bad have consequences, and expands upon the server side lore without intruding on the base lore. This all does depend on it being done well by the staff.

Cloning
No, now and forever, no. Cloning is for one, not an escape for permadeath. When you die, you die. A clone is not you, it is a person that is made in your image. A clone doesn't extend your life, it just passes your stuff on to a stranger that looks like you. Cloning is one of the lamest, laziest ways of handling most any form of resolved conflict.

If there is issues with consent, fix the system instead of putting a half passed bandaid on it.

Progression & Economy
I am not familiar with how the new progression works. I likely will not include any of that icly for my characters though. As long as players can get to one another, it should be fine. A roleplay economy is preferred to a restricted economy in my eyes, which I have detailed in many threads before this one. Giving people freedom to look how they want and sell what they want is a plus.

Whitelisting
The current system is fine. It is easy for mods to keep track of who is who with logs. Punish offenders rather then placing restrictions on the players who don't misuse the system in place. This is about having fun, and sometimes people like rolling up a new character on a whim and seeing if it takes.
Equipment
The character didn't start to exist when the player made them, they have histories. Don't crowbar in game mechanics when this is entirely an in character issue. Let people use what they want to use, handle abusers.

Colony Construction
Just like above, this system didn't just start when the server started. It what here, people could easily explain colonies by saying it was being worked on prior to when it was oocly built. Unless people are using a colony to amass some form of power from dust, it isn't an issue. As with above, if there is abuse, the mods can fix it.

Colonies are roleplay venues in a sandbox building adventure game. Trying to limit players from one of the primary functions of the game seems silly to me. I support the use of mods still for building and cosmetic purposes for players to have freedom to simply play the game and roleplay.

Faction Representation
This needs to be reworked, and adding more restrictions won't really help. As of right now any faction trying to be anything big that doesn't involve combat will fail under rulings for only player reps. There is not a big enough population on the server to force something like this on people. To many menial jobs that really aren't worth roleplaying to make this work ideally.

Vehicles & Powerful Weaponry
Nothing is wrong with vehicles. Powerful weapons are a case by case issue and should be handled as such by staff.

Forums
No real input beyond making any reporting functions more user friendly is a plus.

Magic
Magic is silly.

 

The reasons you gave about cloning is actually why I want it added. When looked at that way, it could easily provide a ton of interesting stories for those who choose to play as a clone. How would they deal with it? Would try try to copy their predecessor or do things differently? Would people discriminate against clones? And why were they cloned? Was a lover, mad with grief, blinded to what he or she was really doing and just wanted to get some form of his or her partner back? Or perhaps a family member did that? Did the original purchase the clone because their fear of death put them in a state of denial about the fact that it wouldn't really help?

These are all interesting story ideas, and I think it could be fun to see more clone characters on the server.
And of course, when viewed this way and not as a respawn, the use of it as a get out of jail free card will be at the very least migitated.

 

Except no, that won't work, because most people will just use it to play the same person with the same consciousness.

 

Cloning won't be used that way. For instance, when Angel was cloned, where did he go? Right back to where he was before. It took him days to end up with Ailanthus and then a week or two to be the same character as ever, superficially at the very least. Cloning might provide a ton of 'super duperdy do' opportunities or people. But people will mostly use it as a way to avoid consequences, just like consent.

Beyond that, Kaz. You explicitly stated you want technology to be a gradual thing. You want it to be realistic. Instead of everyone having super advanced power armor and weapons, people have gear that makes sense for a space-age frontier. Advanced cloning technology probably isn't included in that. You'd need the resources for it, the ability to synthesize organic compounds, the mapping of an adult brain to ensure they don't wake up a newborn in and adult's body, the complicated machinery and facilities that would likely be necessary to monitor and protect the whole process.

It's something that would be advanced, and likely expensive. The fact that it may exist seems to contradict earlier mission goals.

 

A central staff controlled law faction seems like it would punish bad characters. Whether your character is good or evil should be completely irrelevant in determining the result of conflicts.

 

I understand your point. But the reason I had him do that was because he was desperately trying to deny that he had died and was changed, by copying the actions of his predecessor. And one could clearly see the changes in him once he was broken out of that denial and had to leave the tribe. But this is not the thread to go back and forth on, I think, so if you have any other thoughts on the character feel free to PM me. I would be more than happy to explain my attempt at clone RP to you or anyone else who is curious about it.

 

Punished by who though? Who's to say the ''government'' aren't evil themselves and don't care?

In the real worlds the good guys don't always win.

The faction in power decides what is legal and illegal. Many things that were perfectly legal in the past are considered very evil by modern standards, such as slavery.

Breaking the law in a civilised colony should come with consequences of course. But what the laws are should be decided by the players with characters ruling that colony.

 

Additionally you would require a larger and more disciplined staff to run an unbiased law-based faction. The four or five people now would not have the presence to command any level of authority.